Workshops

The San Diego Watercolor Society Workshops are held in our beautiful, light-filled education center in the SDWS Gallery in The ARTS DISTRICT Liberty Station, 2825 Dewey Road, Bldg #202, San Diego, CA 92106.

Prices are discounted for SDWS Members. To receive the discounted price, please log in, then choose Workshops to find the desired workshop, register and receive the automatic discount.

If you are not a member or your membership has expired and would like to receive the discounted price, renew your membership or join SDWS prior to signing up.

Workshops

Moving Towards Abstraction

Instructor: Roberta Dyer

Leave your rules and preconceived notions at home and join us for some fun on the way to reaching a new level of expression. You will choose a figure or object - your BFF, your teapot, your dog, yourself, etc. - loosely draw it and use it as a jumping off point for a mixed media adventure. Get ready to work with paint, acrylic mediums, marking tools and collage to create a dynamic artwork full of color and texture. We will challenge ourselves to reach toward abstraction with a recognizable object, moving beyond boundaries but respecting the contributions of great artists past and present.

In this workshop you will learn the secrets of painting trees, sky, reflections and water in an easy, loose and fun way and how to infuse juicy color and create a glow in your paintings. Learn how to “mind mask” your whites and locate the party focal point!

Designed to learn intuitive painting, starting without preconceived notions or outcomes with no preliminary planning or drawing. Will use a variety of techniques to implement color, texture, line, shape, and value, starting with arbitrary mark making, color application, working transparent to opaque and building layers using a variety of marking tools, watercolor, gesso and acrylic.

Using a full palette of color (no black), Sean encourages the artist to be creative when painting an originally black and white photograph. The aim is to keep a sepia-like quality, while still infusing color into the painting. Sean’s goal for the artist is to breathe new life into an old and weathered photograph.

Starting a painting with color, texture, gestural marks and layers may seem like “chaos,” but it delivers vital energy, both fun and intuitive. Great\ design and composition bring order to the rich start and turn your painting into an attention-getting and expressive finish. Discover and explore your unique expression and personal imagery in realism, abstraction, or non-objective.

Discover the mystery of painting white floral paintings using a variety of different colors! Linda shares picking colors for flowers and recipes for the perfect greens. Paintings will be based on photos offered for your use, or attendees can bring personal photos. Learn photo tips on floral subjects.

A different approach to water media resulting in images with startling realistic textures, colors, perspective, lighting, and shadows with intriguing interplays of shapes and contrasting values, often with objects appearing to float on multiple planes. Will demonstrate an array of new materials, tools, and techniques, to create unique textural effects, and dramatic lighting.

Focus on color and composition in planning and executing the POW factor using light and shadow for maximum impact. Interpreting your photographic references along with compositional tips to bring life and interest to the subject matter. Will use techniques for painting loosely, incorporating backgrounds into subject matter using soft and hard edges, color and fluidity of watercolor, as an artist.

Robin requests interaction with attendees via email a few weeks before the workshop to assist with choosing a good subject for the painting options. This is in an effort to assure your painting will offer maximum drama and light, even while using a limited palette. The goal is to plan a patinting, then relax and paint boldly. This class includes a Friday afternoon 1-4pm class time.

Focus is on inspiration, finding and expressing your unique personal artistic voice. Learn how to see the world in your own unique way, how to identify what it is that will result in the best possible paintings unique to you, and tell your story. Find your unique voice concentrating less on specific objects and more on the strength of a strong abstract value composition.

This workshop focuses on COMPOSITION and DESIGN. During the workshop, you will learn important design principles of composition. Learn how to turn your own small sketches into well-designed successful paintings! The class will be working with watercolor based mediums. Learn Shuang Li’s approach to capturing on-site landscape photos and sketches.

In Jeannie’s Figurative Design Watercolor Workshops she aims to act as a mentor and inspire artists to create character in their figurative work. Jeannie shares her painting application and spontaneous thoughts and stories that guide her design process and style. As a student you are encouraged to be imaginative about the people in your reference photos and to study their expressions, body language, surroundings and interactions.

You will hear about intuitive design and composition, versatility of pigment/water ratios, intentional and spontaneous marks, use of titanium white as an additional pigment, and the freedom to change your mind.

For watercolor painters seeking more from their paintings, a strong composition and a good narrative will lend a “voice” to your art that turns heads. Paint from your own reference material. Chuck’s layout reviews and demos will emphasize that once you have created an interesting narrative, it’s on to telling the story with composition.

Charles uses value/shape method of painting to bring more life to your paintings and confidence as an artist. Charles will address all the fundamentals of brushes, paints, paper, application technique, layout, composition, and the acquiring of reference. He will show new ways to simplify and strengthen your work.

Imagine the combination of relief block prints and watercolor. You will learn to design and carve images with little effort on a soft synthetic material suitable for print additions. These designs will build detail and strong lines for our watercolor painting using simple printmaking methods. Bright colors, lines, and shapes just pop immediately on the surface using fully charged dropped in watercolor pigments.

Tom has a uniquely styled landscape painting style, strives for a level of excitement and drama that seems to push somewhere beyond what the environment naturally provides. Tom will assist in considering subjects searching for something striking, like sky color, light direction, shadow patterns, or sunlight glint on water. He embellishes those striking features to impact the viewer.